Recap: last week in Chapter 1 our project manager consumed the entire entertainment budget and saved Christmas. This week he takes a firm but caring hand on his team as they continue to design the data warehouse. Once again the disclaimer, this diary was emailed to me and I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of the account. A Million Little Pieces of Data - Chapter 2 Monday Team meeting. Conference room. The whiteboard gleams at me from across the room. Everyone is staring at me. I remove ten bottles of vodka from my brief case and place them on the desk in front of me. I address the team. Today we are going to play the data warehouse drinking game, just to get everyone relaxed and help with our brainstorming. Jill has a question. Does this meet our occupational health and safety guidelines? Good question Jill.. My name is Jan.. Statistically most accidents caused by drinking happen in bars, on the road and in the home. So we should be a lot safer drinking here in the office. This seems to put everyone in the room at ease except for those who tense up. I continue. Here are the rules. Every time someone says the word 'dimension' or 'fact' we all down a shot of vodka. Every time someone mentions data quality we down a flaming shot. I slide the shot glasses and bottles to the people around the table. I read the agenda. Well it looks like our architect Archie is going to present to us the details on the data architecture. Take it away Archie. Thanks Arthur. And you can call me Malcolm, since that's my name. The data architecture consists of a data model to represent our business data in a series of fact and dimension tables. The customer dimension, product dimension, status dimension and time dimensions are shown here along with the purchasing fact and summary fact. Note how dimension one and dimension two link to the fact and the fact to the fact summary… Tuesday I wake up. I am not naked. I am still in my business suit. A dog is licking my face. I hope it's a dog. I open my eyes. Our pet dog Rudolph is licking my face. I am lying in his pet flap, my top half in the kitchen and my back half in the yard. Mum is cooking breakfast. It rained all night. My back half is wet. I have a meeting with the CIO in half an hour. I have a thumping headache. I have no recollection of anything after the team meeting. I rest my eyes for a moment. I open them again. It's night time. Mum is cooking dinner. Wednesday The CIO meets me in my corner office. She is fuming. I am only twenty four hours and fifteen minutes late for our Tuesday morning meeting. Alfred, I got your project charter on Friday. It was worse then spam. I spent a lot of time on that charter! It is only half complete. There is no executive summary. Some of the sections have nothing but template instructions in them. The CEO is expecting a completed project charter by COB Friday, a project plan by Monday and a prelim design by the end of next week! I'll get the team right on it! All but one of your team is still in hospital recovering from alcohol poisoning. I'll get that one person right on it! That one person is the architect who was bludgeoned with a bottle for mentioning 'dimension' too many times! I guess that makes me the winner of the drinking game. Look, you've hospitalised most of the team. You've almost killed the architect. You've achieved no deliverables in over a week. It's lucky for you the CEO thinks you are the best thing since sliced bread. Run that by me again. Moving the entire team onto sick leave for a week and bludgeoning the architect has freed up 25% of our budget and the CEO thinks you've saved the project. The architect was costing us a fortune. He was delirious after the skull fracture and we recorded it and it turns out he blurted out an entire technical architecture in three languages and he is no longer required. Guess that makes me the hero. Not if you don't deliver. Mess up with the charter and he will scrap the entire project. He has a smite button on his desk and he isn't afraid to use it. She stormed out of the office before I could ask here what COB meant. After an hour of reading and research I had my answer. COB is close of business. I had to come up with a document and quickly. There was only one way to tackle this problem. With a shaky hand I opened my desk draw and pulled out my white board markers. I took two out of the pack. I removed the lids. The sweet fumes took over. Thursday Project charter. Project charter. I stare at the document on my monitor. How hard could it be to fill one of these in? Executive summary. I go to wikipedia and lookup up executive. I copy and paste the summary. That was easy. Let's see what else needs to be filled in. Roles and responsibilities already filled in with most of them allocated to me. Objectives, risks, constraints, assumptions, dependencies and requirements still need to be filled in. For a short time I black out. I am tempted to make a run for it, but I'm not going to let this project fail, not on my watch. Only one thing comes to mind. I ring Mike. Mike here. Mike, it's Alfred. What can I do for you champ. Well you know how I asked for your help a couple months ago, when I was applying for jobs, and I wanted to write a CV, and you sent me yours as an example. Yes. Well it worked, I got a job as a manager of a data warehouse. But Alfred, have you ever been a manager before? No. Have you ever worked on a data warehouse before? No. Then how did you get the job? They got very excited by your CV. You submitted my CV to get yourself a job? I had to. I need proof of three job interviews a week to keep my unemployment payments. Do you know how hard it is to constantly get job interviews for jobs you wont be offered? It takes a great CV and a terrible interview technique. I stuffed up on this one. They offered me a job and the money was too good to pass up. But Alfred, you're lazy, you're useless, you're unreliable, you're stupid. Who was your referee? You were. Well I do remember taking a call from someone asking about you and as usual I talked you down. They must have decided I was bagging you out because I wanted to employ you myself. How did you get past the interview? They brought the CIO in to meet me and she was flirting with me. Next thing you know I wake up in her bed with a hangover and a signed contract. That's how I got into SOA. So I have this project charter thing in front of me and I need to finish it by tomorrow and I have no idea what I'm doing. Dude, the only way you are going to get my help is by paying market rates. Well, as it happens, I have managed to free up 25% of the project budget. Call me in the morning. Friday It's morning. I'm at my desk. I have the project charter open, I've downed two shots, I've got the white board markers ready. I ring Mike. Morning Alfred. Let's get this charter done. What sections have you filled in so far? I've got estimated budget, resourcing and executive summary. Righto Alfred, first things first, under your estimated budget move 20% to external consulting, aka me. Done. What have you got for your exec summary. A summary of what an executive is. I thought so. Go back to the project costs and move another 5% into external consulting. Now an exec summary is easy. Go into your mail and find a message from someone in your company kicking off the project. Talks about how great it is going to be. I've got something here from the CEO. Perfect. Now go to an online translator, convert it to Spanish, convert it back to English and paste it in. It's nearly incomprehensible.. And a perfect exec summary. Now give me the list of unfinished sections. I give him the list. Tough one Alfred. Search through document archives for any documents referencing project charters and data warehouses. Look through all the network drives. Okay, a few old folders in here on the network. Ten years ago there was a Next Generation Data Warehouse project. One year later there was a Next Generation DW re-engineering project. Two years after that was the Next Generation DW Retirement project. Perfect. Open up all three charters. Put re-engineering and retirement requirements into new objectives, put retirement benefits into new benefits and reverse the meaning of each point, put re-engineering risks into dependencies, put the risks from the first two into the new risks. Done. That was some fast copy and paste. I've had plenty of practice, three years of University assignments. Lock and load. Lock and load? Attach and email. You are done. That only took twenty minutes. My timesheet is on your fax, I've rounded it to two hours for preparation and travel time. I like the way you work. Same time Monday? You got it.